Happy Chinese New Year!

Gōng xǐ fā cái! Gong hai fat choi!

29 January marks the start of the Chinese Year of the Snake in the popular interpretation of the Chinese Zodiac. Unlike the Gregorian calendar, which was based solely on the movements of the Earth around the Sun, the Chinese traditionally use a lunisolar calendar that takes into account both the progress of the Moon’s phases as well as the Earth’s orbit of the Sun. The traditional Chinese calendar is used for religious purposes, festivals and agriculture. Describing the complex intertwining celestial forces shaping form and change and characterising each formation with an animal representing its nature for the common people, the Chinese calendar is a wonder of natural philosophy, astronomical observation and mathematical computational complexity.

Chinese astrology arose alongside a pioneering history of astronomy in China.

A cyclical lunisolar calendar

Unlike most other calendars, the Chinese calendar does not count years in an infinite sequence but maps a repeating cycle of 12 years, each associated with the attitudes and behaviours of a different animal, that chronicles a celestial sequence that repeats in its entirety every sixty years. The calendar has been in use for at least 2000 years, and is traditionally reckoned to date back to 2637 BCE.

The Chinese calendar still holds great cultural and religious significance in many Far Eastern cultures, including Myanmar, Thailand, China and Japan, although following globalisation, the Gregorian calendar is often used as a standardised international chronicle of time for administration and commerce. This serves as a reminder that for all the astrology and careful mathematics involved in the derivation of our systems of measuring time, ultimately every measure is somewhat arbitrary – we celebrate birthdays and centenaries as if the time were auspicious, yet if we used any other of the many rationally derived systems of time measurement, those same points in time would not align with a round number of counting units and would be considered quite unremarkable.

The start of the Chinese New Year that is celebrated typically follows the popular Chinese zodiac and so moves around much more than the traditional astrological reckoning using the first solar phase of the year to pin the new year down to a 48-hour period in February, used for precise calculations and predictions.

Celebrating Chinese New Year

The Chinese New Year is one of the biggest celebrations of the Chinese year, celebrated by a series of festivities rooted in Chinese folklore, such as fireworks and firecrackers that legend records were used to frighten away a great evil threatening a defenceless village. Similarly, energetic lion dance troupes were traditionally intended to welcome the new year and drive away evil spirits. As is traditional in Chinese culture, gifts of money in red envelopes, a colour associated with good fortune, is traditional at this time of year.